Monday morning and ten o'clock found Selina and Maud, both more than a little shy, and also a good deal excited, presenting themselves at the door of the Bruce library where Mrs. Bruce and Mrs. Higginson awaited them. The room itself was familiar to them both, with its faded solid red carpet, its book-shelving from floor to ceiling behind doors of oak and glass, its framed prints of Washington, Jefferson, Clay and Robert E. Lee, its incredible litter of papers and pamphlets, its overflow of books stacked into corners and upon chairs.

But to-day it was visibly made ready for the occasion. The big central table was swept clean by the simple expedient of piling its accumulation on the floor beneath, Marcus' old desk in a corner stood cleared and open, and a kitchen table of deal, piled with stationery and printed circulars, was placed near a window.

Mrs. Bruce herself, tall, unmended and ungroomed, and entirely unconcerned as to that, was taking envelopes by the pack out of boxes.

Mrs. Harriet Polksbury Higginson, otherwise Mrs. Amos Higginson, was seated at the table. Her iron-gray hair was drawn in rippling bands either side her personable, big-featured face, her silk dress was sensible, her big-faced watch with its short chain and bunch of charms, laid on the table by her, was for utility, though the stones in the rings on her strong, goodly hands, were wonderful.

To Selina and Maud, as said before, not the least exciting part in the undertaking, was the thought of working under Mrs. Higginson.

"Not that we are snobs," Maud had diagramed yet again, "nor because she's our richest woman in the biggest house. But because being the richest woman in the biggest house, she's famous for being outspoken and independent of the snobs and all the rest of it, and therefore worth while."

Aunt Juanita, looking up, saw the two girls standing in the doorway a bit diffidently, both in summer wash-dresses, Maud's gingham pink, Selina's percale blue. As the two dimly realized even then, Aunt Juanita saw femininity in the mass only, as a cause, an issue. Its youth and its diffidence and its pink and blue habiliments were lost on her, and its hesitation to come on in and get to business, only irritated her.

"Well, Maud, well, Selina, come in, come in," testily. "Everything's here in readiness," as they entered, "and the first thing's to get our list of chosen names in shape with their addresses. Selina, since you're to work with me, take the desk for the time being. Maud, sit at the table across from—Mrs. Higginson, do you know my niece, Selina Wistar, and my young friend, Maud Addison?"

They took, their places hastily, Aunt Juanita palpably having no thought of confusing amenities with purpose.

"Selina," from Aunt Juanita brusquely, "here are three lists, a combined church list, Mrs, Higginson's dinner and party lists, and the names of women taxpayers in town that Aurelius secured for me. We're checking these over and want you to make a revised list from them, alphabetically arranged. And here's a city directory, Maud. As Selina hands the lists to you, fill out their addresses." Aunt Juanita, though she abjured amenities, was a credit to her sex in being definite about what she considered her business.

Mrs. Higginson, checking names on her lists with a gold lead-pencil, looked up, at the abrupt method of introduction and smiled good-humoredly, at the assistant in pink, and then the assistant in blue. For her woman in the mass still included individuals, and amenities belonged to the life she knew.

"Every woman's name on the list you're to make, Miss Selina," she explained, "is a target at which we two are proposing to fire our convictions. It's a glorious thing at any time of one's life to have convictions, let me tell you, if you haven't discovered it." Was she laughing at them? "Mrs. Bruce and I are the two liveliest women in this town, and always will be, because our convictions, whatever they be, ride us."

Having finished unboxing the envelopes Aunt Juanita was going around distributing ink. She paused at this point in Mrs. Higginson's remarks, tweaked her nose with the side of the ink bottle in her hand, since that hand was occupied with the bottle, and addressed herself to this lady.

"Organize! Organize! If we can just get that word and its significances over to the women in this town! If we can make 'em understand that woman's hope everywhere lies in this one word! If we can show 'em that it's the instrument of the whole era upon us, for class, labor, capital, too, Aurelius points out, as well as the one instrument for them! Organize and discover our strength as women and so on to our rights. That's the phrase. That's the slogan."

The clerical force in pink showed a bright spot on either cheek! The open heart and the open mind were ever hers! Her handsome, hazel-brown eyes beneath her red-brown hair were dilating with the beginnings of zeal, of fire!

The clerical force with the heavy masses of pale flaxen hair, the clerical force, that is to say, in blue brought some names on a bit of paper over to the visibly impressed force in pink. "Organize for what, Maud? Who'll organize? And where?"

"Hush," said Maud, "I don't know. But I feel right from the start I'm with 'em! So you're, Selina." And so were others all over this fair land to be with them; others as great in faith and zeal as Maudie, though no better equipped in comprehension as to what it was about! But it was glorious none the less to be there!

Mrs. Higginson was replying to Aunt Juanita. Her voice was good-humored but ripe and decided. She was a person accustomed to being heard. "Now, Juanita Bruce, you haven't any grounds whatever for assuming I'm with you in any position. You know exactly where I stand in this movement among women all over this land. You know the stand I've taken in it as well as you know your own. And you know why I want to organize our own women in this town. I say this movement, this quiver, so to put it, running from side to side of this continent, has some underlying cause. I say it's woman's dissatisfaction with herself. I say she's roused and looked at herself and the sight's not pleasing to her. You put the cause outside of woman. I say to my sex, 'Organize and find out what's the trouble with yourself.' That's my slogan to my sex, and that's my present mission."

Aunt Juanita banged down the ink bottle still in her hand. Two hairpins leaped from her hair with the impact, and the switch of gray hair that all too palpably eked out her own scant store, promptly surged forward and threatened her left eye. But the uplift of the moment raised everybody's mind above such as that! The clerical force were so enthralled they couldn't keep to work if salvation depended on it. And on the other hand apparently salvation of some kind depended on their listening and finding out about this thing? Was there a movement among their sex, a movement wide as the continent? Where had they been during it? Why had they not heard of it? How had it manifested itself? Had it spoken?

So these young and ardent two! Nor knew that they in their gropings, their dissatisfactions, their restlessness, their eager scannings of horizons, their questionings, their discontents with inaction, they and Juliette in her revolt, they and Adele in her repinings, were part and proof with it and of it!

Aunt Juanita retwisting her hair with that impatience called out in the human breast by the depravity of inanimate objects such as hair switches, was flinging back words at Mrs. Higginson.

"Don't expect me to believe in any such stand as that, Harriet Higginson? There isn't but one issue to this thing. In a word, women have discovered they haven't their inalienable rights, and they want 'em."

"I'm so certain in my stand, Juanita Bruce, that I've come into this local thing with you to work for the issue as I believe it to be. I've given not a little thought and investigation and observation to the matter, for a good many years, and so have you. But I tell you, Juanita, your suffrage bee shall be proved a mere side issue in the final adjustment, whenever this does come, sooner or later. You and your adherents are diverting us from the main issue. We may lose it through you for years. For just to the extent that you do divert us you're putting the final outcome back."

Aunt Juanita snorted and started to reply. Mrs. Higginson, using the gold eye-glasses in her hand, waved her to unwilling silence.

"No, let me finish, Juanita, and then take your say. This is mine. I claim, and I'll go on claiming—I went up to your meeting in Rochester and stood for it from the platform. I'm going over to Chicago week after next and put it to 'em again from their platform. I claim that our rights, as you call 'em, will come to us as our capabilities push ahead of us, exactly as the flood follows the channel. I see it so plain, it's come to be an obsession with me. Let me illustrate. Take this town we live in, you and I. We're not the big mould of women now our mothers and our grandmothers were. Reasonable and intelligent administration of our homes and our servants and our income is the exception, and who shall say this town's not typical? For my part, my slogan is, and I'm here to cry it from your housetop, 'Organize and find out what's the matter.' Ability engendered among us, Juanita, and the rest of what you want will follow," Mrs. Higginson flipped the air again with her eye-glasses, "as the night the day."

The clerical force drew breath. It was a thrilling and momentous morning! They wouldn't have missed it!

"As the day the night is rather what my kind is demanding," from Aunt Juanita grimly. "We're benighted enough in all conscience now. Harriet Higginson, hear me. Not one woman in a hundred in this town, no, not one in five hundred or a thousand, owns a bank-book. I've investigated," grimly. "And if this is so in this town, why not the same thing elsewhere?"

The clerical force in blue felt this to be a sidelight. It brought in Tuttle Jones. Had he in the end secured the information for Aunt Juanita? How far away from this present battlefield seemed Tuttle and his world?

Mrs. Higginson was replying. "H'm, now that's valuable data, Juanita, I owe you some gratitude for giving me that. Putting that with some conclusions I've arrived at myself, sheds light on my problem. The whole cause of our present economic unfitness as I see it in woman, may lie in this fact you give me—no bank account of her own. It's worth looking into. It's only fair a woman should handle and apportion the money through which she is expected to administer the home. And what I've discovered for myself is this. Not one woman in your thousand in this town knows the price of flour, or sugar, or bacon or any other staple she uses every day in her household, except as quoted to her at her nearest grocery. No, nor can tell you her running expenses of this year as compared with any other year under her management. Nor but is so harassed by the servant problem as it's grown to be, that her peace and comfort and almost her self-respect is undermined. And our mothers bequeathed us a wonderful article in servants here in the South, too, in the house-servants of slave-time. Organize and find out what's the matter, I say. If the fault's not in us, then find out where it is, even unto bank-books," laughing. "And at all events, Juanita," pacifically and smiling again, "we're agreed on one point, the essential point right now. Organize 'em. Put it to 'em, pro and con, you and I, and let 'em choose. But first, organize 'em."

It was a thrilling and momentous morning as may be seen! The clerical force in pink and the clerical force in blue, entirely unable to hold its mind to the task in hand, felt that they were in touch at last with issues, real issues, throbbing, vital and essential issues!

And who shall say they were not? Though these issues, a quarter of a century old since then, are still open! And still open perhaps, and again who may say not, because as Mrs. Higginson claimed, the movement mistook the main issue?

Undoubtedly it was a thrilling and momentous morning. Youth is eager, youth is full of the ardor of impatient faith, youth is impressionable. It longs to be fired! It yearns for a cause! 'Rights' is a stirring word! 'Organize' is a new one! Had the clerical force found its cause at last? It wondered.

On the way home at noon, Maud spoke to Selina. They were confused over a few matters. "Mrs. Bruce is all for rights, Selina, as if it were a personal thing. I don't suppose there can be a person alive, do you, who comes nearer doing as she pleases."

"Just as nobody could be more capable than Mrs. Higginson with all that money and children and grandchildren, and the retinue of servants she's famous for running. Or maybe it's because they've each got what they stand for, that they want it for other women?"

"'Rights,'" from Maud, ruminating. "It's a thrilling word, Selina. And 'organize' is a new one."

"Slogan," corrected Selina, "that's what they called it."

That evening Culpepper and Mr. Welling and Preston Cannon were at the Wistars calling. By chance Maud and Juliette were over, too.

Maud and Selina were eloquent about their new word.

"Organize how and for what?" queried Mr. Cannon. "No, I'm not caviling, truly I'm not, I want to know?"

So in a way did they, but they were not going to confess it.

"For—uh—consolidation," from Maud grandly.

"For—well—some general benefit," from Selina hesitatingly.

"It's in the air," from Maud authoritatively. She'd heard Mrs. Bruce say it was.

Little Judy, quiet as a rule of late, spoke here so suddenly and so unexpectedly, they all started. There seemed no haziness about it to Juliette. They hardly knew her these days.

"It's an impelling," she said passionately. "We're all feeling it. Woman, I mean. It's driving us. We don't know where it's taking us. But it's mandatory. I wouldn't say it's not instinct."

"What is?" asked Mr. Cannon breaking the silence which this astounding outbreak from Juliette left behind it momentarily.

The young ladies, two of them at any rate, were indignant at his levity. Figuratively they turned their backs on Mr. Cannon and refused to answer him, and went on talking about the morning and its revelations and purposes to the others.

Culpepper came across to Selina presently and leaned over the back of her chair and spoke softly to her. His breath touched her cheek and her pretty ear. Her heart leaped, treacherous, traitorous heart! And the blood beat in her throat!

"Honey, when you going to let me come and talk to you? School's over next week and I'll have to go home. I can't go on finding excuses for hanging around."